


tiny infinities

by egophagia



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Multi, some nightmarish imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-24 13:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/egophagia/pseuds/egophagia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>series of shorts (drabbles, ficlets?) set with FeMC, named Minako, not always in the same universe, not always sensical.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. log 001

**run away with me**

When Mitsuru asks her if she's ever thought of running away to somewhere no one knows her, she ends up saying, "I am happy where I am," and is surprised when she isn't called out on the blatant lie—though how could anyone tell, when she's made wearing masks the fuel for her power?

**nightmares**

aki 01

Akihiko prowls her dreams,—blood streaming down his face and out his gaping wound of a mouth—begging for her to reach inside him and hold his heart in her hands to keep it safe. "I'll live forever if you do," he whispers when he finds her and bites the fingers off her hand.

fuuka 01

She begins to have dreams where Fuuka's eyes are replaced with diamonds (the real ones held out as an offering on a copper plate) and rubies fall out of her cut throat. Shadows with the shape of men swarm around the sickly girl and tie ropes to her ankles to drag her away but she doesn’t budge, only plead with her eyes—she doesn’t know with which ones—for an absolution Minako didn't know how to give.

shinji 01

It doesn't matter that Shinjiro bleeds camellias in her dreams or that sometimes he stands up to shower her with the blossoms, burying her in them until she can't breathe (pink for longing, white for perfection, and red for _you are a flame in my heart_ ) while assuring her it was the way things should be.

mitsuru 01

Sometimes she has dreams about Mitsuru where the girl twirls her too bright hair in a way that’s terrifying in impossibility alone, a fear that only worsens when she giggles. “I want to run away,” she says, “maybe I’ll ride my motorcycle straight into the ocean. I’ll become a mermaid and fall in love with a prince; I’ll drown him though, because love ends with marriage, I know; I've read it in a book.” She giggles again, and Minako wants to say something about how mermaids don’t have talons like Mitsuru but maybe they have hair that moves on its own like hers. But by then Minako’s mouth is already stuffed full of scarlet locks and she’s already being pulled down into the depths of the ocean where Mitsuru licks her ear and says, “be my prince.”

**animus**

“You,” she says to Theo one day, “you’re my animus, right? I think so.”

She squints at the printed sheets she’d pulled out of her bag. Messy annotations line the sides of the pages, (psychology, she found, was a subject that required knowledge of terms that looked like one thing and meant another and one that required far more introspection than she had the time or courage for) and she reads one of them aloud, voice stuttering over the illegibility of her own writing. “The animus is the, ah, manifestation of the female’s unconscious masculine traits, her inner male personality.”

Theo smiles at her, patient and slightly amused. “Is that so?”

Minako gives it thought and replies with an affirmative.

“Well then,” he says, “what does your inner male say about you?”

She realizes she’d been so proud of the solution she had reached that she hadn’t thought about what it all meant. _Problems and solutions with no practical application._

She watches Theo out of the corner of her eye, refusing to look at him directly, because he’ll only give her **that** look, the one that makes her blush and forces her to ignore the pulse that goes through her at the sight of it. It’s the one he uses when he says things like, “it’s your fault, you know” and “now you’ll be safe now for all eternity” and “please, go on, _teacher._ ”

“I’m a pervert?”

He chuckles, hiding his mouth behind a white gloved hand, “Minako-sama, not everything has to mean something. Some things simply are. Besides, I do not like to think I am defined by a single personality trait. There are many more sides to me, unbeknownst to you and even to myself.”

“Alright then,” she agrees.

They continue to walk in silence.

“Next time,” Theo announces, “I should like to see your room.”

He smiles at her, and god damn it she looked.

**narcissus**

Looking at Ryoji is like looking at her reflection in reverse. A double that looks nothing like her. _He’s got eyes like me even though they’re not the same color or shape they might as well be my eyes,_ she thinks, _his nose and mouth too_.

When he walks past her in the morning to get to his seat, her eyes trace his profile, noting how the distance between the top of his forehead to the tip of his nose is more than likely the same as the distance between hers.

When he follows Junpei out the door at the end of class—both of them excitedly chattering inanities—she considers the back of his head and decides that someone could mistake them for each other from behind, his male frame and height notwithstanding.

Akihiko sees but keeps quiet. Aigis sees and tightens her fists with an audible metallic groan. Nobody knows what Junpei sees and he doesn’t reveal his thoughts on the matter. Yukari sees and asks her what she thinks she’s doing when any other girl would kill to take her place next to Aki.

“I dunno,” she answers, “I’m sorry.”

The apology does nothing to stop her. Her eyes track Ryoji’s form with his every movement, hungry in a way that’s completely different from lust, but too difficult to explain.

“It’s like he’s got something I’ve had my whole life and just barely lost,” she tells Aki, when he finally presses her face to his chest in an effort to get her to look away, “like I dropped it somewhere and he picked it up and won’t admit to having it.”

“What is it?” he demands, wanting to be harsh in response to the pain she causes him, but finding it too difficult to be rough with her. “I’ll give you anything, Mina, just ask me.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it,” she frowns and turns back to Ryoji, who is hiding his mouth and chin in his scarf and looking at Fuuka through half-lidded eyes. She compares the long fingers and palm held over his heart to her own small hands being held by Akihiko’s. _They’re really similar if you look at the pattern of veins on the back and how the pinkie curls in slightly._

And the next day when he tells her that he lived inside her for ten years, she thinks _well it was obvious wasn’t it, we are exactly alike._

**aki and shinji**

They didn't say her name much anymore. Instead, they gave a wide breadth to corners just in case she walked around them at the same time. Sometimes, they'd leave room enough for a petite, seventeen year old girl to lie in between them in bed. They didn't say her name. Shinji's ruined pocket watch gathered dust in a music box that also held a small stuffed rabbit. They had nothing to say about a girl who'd chosen death as a lover before picking between two (mostly) healthy, breathing boys. Maybe she'd seen the cracks in them and been disgusted, or maybe she'd seen how they reached for her only to fill the jagged edges with her softness. They didn't talk about that girl, who embraced death but not before guiding them into see how their broken pieces slotted perfectly to each other’s.

**ticklish**

Yukari falls asleep next to Minako on the train back.

On top of Minako, actually, but Minako adjusts to the weight and carefully moves aside the heart on her friend’s choker so it doesn’t stab her.

Yukari clutches her new CD in one hand, for a band whose name Minako considers to be unpronounceable ( _those are symbols not letters_ , she insists, _how do you say them?_ ) and breathes against Minako’s neck in a way that makes her curl her toes and hold in a squeak of surprise. She hadn’t known she was ticklish.

**how it should be**

Koromaru barks a greeting at Shinji as he slams the door closed with his foot. He's been yelled at for the habit, but his grocery loaded arms are his excuse and pardon for today.

"I'm home."

Minako hops up from where she'd curled next to Aki during their Bruce Lee marathon.

"We finished Game of Death."

"Damn it," Shinji says, "you ain't getting mochi then."

Mina peers into a bag, fishing out her favorite ice cream. She kisses Shinji on the cheek in thanks for not forgetting (not that he ever has) before grabbing a spoon and taking it back to the couch to share with Aki. Koromaru follows her to steal the spot that would've been Shinji's soon.

"You're not gonna help?" Shinji exclaims. He wonders at how his life ended up with him polarizing from a back alley punk to a bullied house husband.

Aki stares balefully at him while opening his mouth for a spoonful of ice cream from Minako. He wrinkles his nose at the sweetness, but swallows it obediently.

"No way. It's Mina's birthday and all she wants is mochi and you won't make it for her."

"I'll make the fucking mochi, then, just start the movie from the beginning."

**how it is**

Akihiko leans down to rub at the old dog's now patchy fur.

"You're a good boy, Koromaru. The strongest and bravest dog I know. It's alright for you to go now."

Koromaru, lying on his side, looks into the man's tired silver eyes.

He communicates his apologies to the man through soft pants and whines—for leaving him alone, with no one to protect or to be protected by and even more so for leaving him no one to love or be loved by.

Akihiko swallows the ball of pain that pushes its way up his throat. "I keep losing my family, huh? But it's okay. It'll be okay. I have good memories of everyone and I'll keep pushing on, so don't worry about me."

Koromaru whines again before shutting his eyes.

"Say hi to those two for me."

**death visits her**

He visits her. Sometimes he wears Pharos's face and sometimes Ryoji's, but never Death's.

He asks her if she'd redo anything if she had the chance, like refuse to fight or just ignore schoolwork to spend time with her friends.

She has to think about it, scratching at the barbed wires around her wrist, aware that she isn't actually moving at all.

"I'd drink more orange juice," she tells him, feeling her mouth shape the words and also stay completely still.

"Why's that?"

"I got sick a lot. Maybe I needed more vitamin C."

He agrees. It's a fair argument.


	2. log 002

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for nightmarish imagery again (under nightmares).

**spectrum**

“Oh,” they say when they meet each other at the Seal.

The boy, copper headed and with shining crimson eyes, grins at her. Her own smile is slight, but much less like she’s just twisting her lips to keep herself from crying. He reaches out to push aside the short dark hair hiding a brilliantly blue eye.

“Hello,” she murmurs.

“Hello,” answers her twin in inverse.

**headache**

Fuuka learns that staying up until 4am in front of her laptop gives her a different kind of headache than when she stays up taking notes for recipes. One is a dull haze that blurs the edges of the blackboard at school, and makes seeing through Lucia like putting on kaleidoscope glasses to function as a lighthouse.

The other kind is a sharp pain in her right temple, making her want to keep her head tilted to the side, and also to drown herself in the bath.

The trouble is she always forgets which is which habit causes which headache.

  **animus ii**

“Did I make you uncomfortable with my request this time, Minako-sama?”

“Hmm? No. It’s just you, Theo,” she says, sliding a _LaLa DX_ under her bed distractedly.

Theodore turns to look at the books cluttering her desk. He smiles at the psychology texts bookmarked with tarot cards and an encyclopedia of gods and goddesses from around the world.

“I see,” he says, “and does that have anything to do with what you said to me the other day? About me being your animus?”

“Not at all,” she says, finally glancing up from the floor to see him with his back to her. “It was wrong of me to steal your autonomy on a whim.” She wills him to turn around and look at her again, and wills her own self to not turn completely red at the thought of meeting his eyes. His alien presence takes up the entire room, filling the corners and under the bed and into her ears and nostrils (making her lightheaded and giddy but _God, it’s just Theo, I have to tell myself that’s it’s just Theo, he only asked because he doesn’t understand how the world works, not for any ulterior reason_ ).

“I am glad to be present in your thoughts, whatever form they may take.”

“Thank you, Theo.”

He finally looks at her at that.

"No, I must thank  _you_. You allowed me to experience this world and partake in its pleasures in a far better way than I could have by myself. I am eternally gratefully to have met you. This will be the last time I visit this world,”—he breathes in sharply—“and so, this is the last time that I will meet with you outside the Velvet Room,” he says, his deep voice tilting up in apology.

Both Minako and Theo stare at her carpet for a few stretched out seconds before Minako sighs.

“I don’t want that. I don’t want to stop seeing you.”

“Please, Minako-sama, understand what you are saying.”

She meets his eyes, and for the first time revels in the thrill of pleasure his gaze (and his voice and his face and his excitement at everything and just all of him in his neat blue suit and cap and white gloves) instead of being scared by it.

“I do, Theo. I don’t want this to end, but more importantly what I _do_ want is, well, it’s you,” she says. She pays extra care to make sure her voice is strong and unwavering. She won’t let this happiness pass her by.

Theo takes a step forward in half-shock and half-joy. He carefully wraps his arms around her and breathes in the scent of hair and her skin. She holds him tightly, meeting his care with her own recklessness and strength.

“You toss my heart about in the strangest manner.”

“I’m, I’m sorry?” she says, taken aback.

“Yes,” he chuckles and begins to strip off his gloves.

**nightmares ii**

aeigis 01 

Minako has dreams where Aegis sits in front of a fireplace and feeds herself her own appendages. Her mouth hinges open, more than her false skin can take, and the rubbery material stretches and hangs by thin strands. She cracks the joints of her toes before snapping them off completely and pushing them one by one down her throat.

"I want to give birth to a human child," she says when she turns her remaining eye to Minako. "I did assist you in begetting Death. Maybe I can do it on my own this time."

yukari 01 

In her dreams, Yukari sits on Minako, pressing down into the girl’s hips with her own tailbone.  She grinds against Minako, sending spikes of agony up her bones, and whispers filthy secrets into her ear before taking off her choker to slash at her wrists. She pours the blood into the same place the secrets went.

**junpei and the girls**

(and fuuka): you’re a faith healer on t.v.

When Leader tells Fuuka to prepare Oracle, he sucks in a breath. With his luck, this’ll only end badly.

He’s not disappointed.

(and mitsuru): you’re an office park without any trees

He’s not saying that he managed to run across the videotapes that showed Mitsuru hanging out in her room and giggling with nothing on but a towel, but he totally did.

(and yukari): bitter and dumb,  you’re my sugar plum

He’ll never, ever, under any sort of torture admit it to anyone, but he trusts Yuka-tan to have his back more than anyone in a battle.

(and minako): she moves through moon beams slowly

Junpei stares at Minako from across the park—or more exactly, at the person she’s listening to. _Is she friends with EVERYONE?_

(and chidori): and when her edges soften, her body is my coffin

Slowly (excruciatingly slowly, actually), he learns to do Chidori’s hair for her, just the way she likes it.

“Thank you,” she says, meeting his eyes with just a hint of less distrust than before.

He smiles.

((bonus) and  maiko): you're a parasitic, psycho, filthy creature

“IT’S MY BASEBALL.”

“NO, IT’S MINE. MY DADDY GOT IT FOR ME.”

“DIDN’T YOUR DADDY TELL YOU NOT TO LIE? IT’S MINE.”

“Um, Junpei?”

“WHAT.”

He turns to see Fuuka standing next to Koromaru and holding a baseball just like the one he’s got half a grip on.

“This one is yours.”

Koromaru barks.

**his face**

She likes all of Aki's faces, she decides.

The one where his cheeks tint pink and he looks at her through half lidded eyes and pale eyelashes as he smiles shyly, leaving her breathless and whispering _Aki_ into his hair.

The one where he laughs at Koromaru as the dog chases after Junpei and his nose wrinkles and his eyes crinkle and she can't help but laugh along with him, her heart beating wildly at the excitement of being alive and with him.

The one where he furrows his brows and closes his eyes, his mouth turned down in pain as he talks about his sister or Shinjiro and she kisses away his tears he swears he doesn't cry and he kisses away the ones she sheds for him and the pain of always being the one left behind.

The one where he smirks like he's half feral and his eyebrows tilt up, and he's itching to hunt and hit and be hit with or without Polydueces there to help.

That last one always leaves her choosing between telling him to be careful or locking herself up in a room with him to let him take off her underwear with his teeth.

**itchy feet and fading smiles**

Igor, his mouth hidden but no doubt smirking in his all-knowing way, asks her, "Do you know the myth of Orpheus, your initial Persona?"

She remembers the afternoons in the library with Saori when no one came and she used the time to read about her first Persona, and all the Personas since that she'd wielded and fused and bent to her will.

"Of course I do, what about him?"

"And what is it that you know?"

"He made the all the gods cry with his mournful songs for his dead love, Eurydice. He charmed the gods of the underworld even with his pain. He convinced them to let her go, and both Hades and his wife agreed on the condition he walk in front of her and not look back until they both left the underworld. But he looked, and she disappeared. He went insane after that and ended up with his head floating down a river."

Igor's gleeful smile grew wide enough to show even behind his clasped hands.

"Ah, that is but one interpretation of the myth. However, certain sources state that the gods tricked the lyre player with only an apparition of his dead beloved. They never intended to give Orpheus what he wanted, who they considered a traitor for wanting to defy Death's will. They punished his hubris and his cowardice by taking from him what he desired most."

"What does this have to do with me?" she finally snaps, anxious for time despite knowing time stood still for the Velvet Room. She glances at Theodore, and sees him staring carefully at a spot next to her shoulder rather than at her.

"While defying Death's will is one thing, do you consider yourself to be a person who would journey to the abode of the dead for an illusion? The time for your final decision is near. Will you fight and give your life and sanity for something that might not be there, or will you stay and accept the hand that you and all of humanity have been dealt?"

She growls in impatience, “I don’t know, Igor, I don’t have time to think. All I know is I’m not giving up without doing everything I can.”

She stands up from her chair and begins to head towards the elevator gates, which open by themselves at her approach.  She hesitates before them and turns around to bow deeply at the Velvet Room’s occupants.

“I’m very happy to have met you both. I couldn’t have done much without your help. Goodbye.”

—

And later, when she's the only person who stands up, she thinks to herself: _It doesn’t matter, if this is real or an illusion. It doesn’t matter because I am not a person who looks back._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
